In May 2007 Federal Mogul announced it was seeking 70 redundancies from its workforce at the long established engineering premises in. Manufacturing would continue out of the Elstead factory, to maintain supplies for customers like BMW and Perkins. However, it was less than a year before the remaining workforce was informed that the entire site was to close that October. The Elstead works started life at the beginning of the 20th century as Weyburn Engineering, and in recent years it was merged with competitors to become Weyburn Bartel before being bought by Federal Mogul. It has always been the only real factory in the village, and it employed about 300 people in 1937 when it was manufacturing lifeboat engines and other parts for cars and aeroplanes. When soaring asbestos liabilities forced Federal Mogul to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US in 2001, its UK subsidiaries were placed under the control of court appointed administrators. The Elstead workforce, who were carrying out precision engineering for a number of high profile clients on the four-acre site, believed the business still had a future, despite the company’s decision to make 70 redundancies in 2007.
